A 300 year old wine farm on Cape Town’s northern edge is being sold again, and it carries the faint imprint of a vanished boardroom kingdom.
Bloemendal Wine Property, acquired in 2008 by a farming subsidiary of Tokyo Sexwale’s Mvelaphanda Holdings, went to public sale in 2025 with a reserve value of R250 million, in line with commerce and farming publications. The property is big by Cape requirements, roughly 240 hectares with vineyards, venues and a gentle stream of day guests.
It’s an oddly pastoral marker for a person whose public life has been something however. Sexwale is among the nation’s greatest recognized political survivors, a former Robben Island prisoner who rose below the African Nationwide Congress into high authorities posts, then stepped into enterprise with the sheen of Mandela period legitimacy.
Within the early years of democracy, when South Africa tried to sew justice to capitalism, he additionally turned a shorthand for the promise and the discomfort of Black Financial Empowerment. The coverage aimed to broaden black possession, management and participation after apartheid’s systematic exclusion. It additionally created a brand new type of forex: entry.
Sexwale had it in abundance. He may stroll right into a mine boardroom as a liberation veteran and stroll out with a time period sheet. His agency, Mvelaphanda, turned that entry into an online of stakes in gold, platinum, diamonds, property and banking. In its prime, the model signalled a sure sort of deal: politically believable, bankable, and wrapped within the language of transformation.
Then it started to vanish. Not with a single spectacular implosion, however by way of the quieter choreography of South African company life: restructures, unbundlings, title adjustments, delistings and asset gross sales. Bloemendal, now again in the marketplace, stands as one of many few remaining belongings that also plainly factors again to the outdated empire.
From Robben Island to the primary Gauteng authorities
Sexwale, born Mosima Gabriel Sexwale in Soweto in 1953, joined anti apartheid politics younger, first in Black Consciousness circles and later within the ANC’s underground. Convicted within the Pretoria Twelve case, he served 13 years on Robben Island and was launched in 1990, a yr that reshaped the nation and elevated a technology of imprisoned leaders into public life.
The connection with Nelson Mandela was not simply symbolic. Within the transition years, Sexwale was counted among the many activists imprisoned on Robben Island who had been later promoted into management roles after 1994. In these tense months of negotiation, road violence and distrust, he gained a fame as a political fixer and a steadying hand.
Mandela appointed him the primary premier of Gauteng in 1994, putting a newly freed political prisoner in command of the financial engine room of South Africa. The job demanded greater than speeches. It demanded order and supply, a type of governing that might hold the nation’s enterprise capital from panicking whereas communities demanded seen change.
His premiership led to 1998, and he returned to nationwide authorities greater than a decade later as minister of human settlements below President Jacob Zuma, serving from 2009 to 2013. By then, his title had already turn out to be entangled with a unique South African narrative: the start of a black company elite.
Empowerment started as an ethical argument and a sensible repair. A democratic state couldn’t ask individuals to simply accept political freedom whereas the economic system remained largely unchanged. A proper empowerment framework adopted within the early 2000s, and the mining sector specifically started pushing possession stakes towards black companions below constitution necessities and political strain.
Mining homes and banks, dealing with targets and public scrutiny, went on the lookout for black companions. The offers had been usually funded by way of leverage, choice shares and deferred constructions that solely labored if dividends flowed and asset costs climbed. That period wanted intermediaries who may communicate each battle and spreadsheets. Sexwale turned one of the crucial recognisable.
A dealmaker’s playbook and Mvelaphanda’s prime belongings
Sexwale based Mvelaphanda Holdings in 1998, a non-public platform that quickly turned a bridge between established capital and empowerment targets. Profiles of the period described him as chairman and emphasised how his political standing opened doorways that stayed shut for many newcomers.
The group’s public surge got here by way of a reverse itemizing. In 2004, a listed companies agency, Rebserve, was used because the automobile for a merger with Mvela Holdings after which a rebrand into Mvelaphanda Group. It was the type of monetary manoeuvre that outlined the empowerment years: new capital dressing itself in outdated shells to get onto the market shortly.
Mining was the centre of gravity, and Mvelaphanda Sources turned the flagship for that ambition. A headline take care of Gold Fields gave Mvelaphanda an efficient curiosity in Gold Fields’ South African gold belongings, a transaction valued within the billions of rand and loudly framed as a breakthrough.
Its disclosures in that interval confirmed what it had assembled: a significant holding in Northam Platinum, a big stake in diamond miner Trans Hex, and publicity to gold by way of the Gold Fields construction. It additionally pursued diamond exploration by way of a three way partnership linked to Trans Hex. These weren’t passive holdings. They had been levers.
Stakes in working corporations created board affect, dividend flows and deal choices. In addition they served as collateral in a market that was comfortable to lend in opposition to rising commodity costs. The construction may seem like alchemy: paper wealth created by way of rising share costs, then used to fund the subsequent stake.
Banking introduced a unique type of legitimacy. Absa’s empowerment deal, which positioned a ten% stake into the Batho Bonke consortium in 2004, was marketed as transformation in motion. Sexwale, as chair of the consortium, turned one of many public defenders of a mannequin that attempted to marry broad participation language to elite dealmaking actuality.
Mvelaphanda’s listed group additionally reached into monetary companies and property. That included pursuits tied to Abvest Associates and Broll Property Group, amongst others. In time, a few of these holdings had been bought or absorbed by bigger establishments, which is usually what occurs when a consortium automobile has served its strategic goal.
That is the place the empowerment period’s mechanics mattered. Mvelaphanda didn’t sometimes purchase entire corporations within the quaint sense. It brokered stakes, usually by way of consortium constructions, choice shares, choices and layered holding corporations. It partnered with incumbents who wanted empowerment factors and with financiers who needed proximity to the centre of energy with out trying political.
That mannequin additionally made private wealth onerous to map. Holdings sat in corporations, trusts and autos whose beneficiaries could possibly be contested or personal. That opacity turned a part of Sexwale’s public story when his marriage collapsed.
His courtship of Judy van Vuuren started within the jail years and have become a favorite South African parable: the paralegal and the political prisoner, love notes smuggled previous authority. The divorce, which burst into headlines in 2013 and 2014, dragged his funds into courtroom filings and public argument, with claims about way of life spending and disputes over trusts and upkeep.
The jet story lives within the nation’s political gossip museum. A columnist wrote that Sexwale purchased Judy an eight seater Lear Jet as a Valentine’s Day present, a element that caught as a result of it captured the whiplash of South Africa’s new cash. Later reporting and commentary cited discuss of a number of personal jets. Public documentation stays restricted, and the claims sit within the realm of reported allegation and insider chatter moderately than audited reality. The cultural affect, although, was actual: it framed Sexwale not as an empowerment technician, however as an emblem of extra.
The lengthy unwind and the place the items landed
Mvelaphanda’s retreat started earlier than most individuals seen. The worldwide monetary disaster uncovered the fragility of leveraged empowerment constructions, and traders grew impatient with holding corporations that traded at reductions to their underlying belongings.
Mvelaphanda Sources started speaking brazenly about restructuring and delisting, with plans to promote down key holdings and unbundle its largest stake to shareholders. The logic was brutal and acquainted: unlock worth by dismantling the layers. What traders had as soon as rewarded as intelligent structure now regarded like pointless complexity.
The decisive second got here in 2011. Northam moved to amass what was left of Mvelaphanda Sources after an unbundling that shifted a significant Northam shareholding on to Mvelaphanda shareholders. Disclosures on the time set out what Northam anticipated to select up: money, pursuits in platinum tasks, and a stake in Trans Hex, amongst different gadgets. The scheme unfolded by way of formal conferences, approvals and a delisting from the Johannesburg Inventory Change.
The empire’s signature belongings didn’t vanish. They merely moved on.
Northam carried the Trans Hex stake for a number of years, then bought it. Trans Hex later delisted from the JSE and now operates privately, nonetheless tied to diamond mining and growth plans that now not carry the Mvelaphanda badge.
Gold Fields remained a worldwide miner, however its South African portfolio was reshaped. Its key South African mines had been unbundled into what turned Sibanye, later Sibanye Stillwater. Which means one of many earliest constructing blocks of Mvelaphanda’s status ended up below a unique South African company champion.
The Absa empowerment story additionally ended with out the empowerment mystique. Batho Bonke ultimately started promoting down its stake, reviving long-running questions on who benefited most from these constructions and whether or not the broad based mostly promise matched the result.
The company shell carrying the Mvelaphanda title pale too. The listed Mvelaphanda Group modified its title to New Bond Capital and later went by way of delisting processes. The renaming was an epitaph in gradual movement: an organization as soon as valued for political proximity turned a generic funding label, then drifted out of the general public creativeness.
Sexwale’s submit Mvelaphanda life has been quieter however not absent. He stays a public ANC elder, nonetheless weighing in on management succession and nationwide debates, whereas his business pursuits sit largely behind personal constructions.
His seen belongings are those that floor in property and deal reporting. Bloemendal is the clearest instance, a tangible remnant purchased by way of a Mvelaphanda subsidiary and later mentioned in enterprise protection of the Cape winelands rush.
Mvelaphanda’s deeper legacy is much less a couple of single man’s fortune than a couple of nation’s first try to show political victory into financial change with out detonating the system that already existed. It labored, partly, and it warped, partly. It created board seats and dividends, and it created folklore about jets and mansions. It constructed black possession in actual corporations, and it concentrated that possession in a well-known set of palms.
Bloemendal’s sale discover reads like another luxurious itemizing. The historical past behind it’s not strange in any respect.
